


so much esteem, and so much of the other thing

by dee_lirious



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Ghost-Drifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 21:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dee_lirious/pseuds/dee_lirious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh is dreaming of Mako again. Or, he thinks he is, until her dark eyes catch him, and he realizes that he’s dreaming <i>with</i> her. (Alternatively, this is titled <i>Here Have Some Raleigh Becket Feelings.</i>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	so much esteem, and so much of the other thing

**Author's Note:**

> (whew, got this out in time for jaegercon. happy k-day, you beautiful fandom, you.)
> 
> many thanks to [sam](http://big-weirdo.tumblr.com/) for the beta, and my significant other who laughed kindly at me when I cried in the car about how grateful I am for depictions of interracial relationships and fully-fleshed female characters. any remaining errors are my own.
> 
> references to [ghost-drifting](http://travisbeacham.tumblr.com/post/56005082876/pacific-rim-lexicon-entry-1-ghost-drifting), [oblivion bay](http://pacificrim.wikia.com/wiki/Oblivion_Bay), and the late, great [tamsin sevier](http://pacificrim.wikia.com/wiki/Tamsin_Sevier). I tried as hard as I could to avoid using Danger’s full name, but it did manage to sneak in there once, so warning for the use of a slur. also: references to and descriptions of post-traumatic stress-like symptoms.
> 
> title taken from a love letter from alexander pope to teresa blount, dated 1716.

After Hong Kong, after sealing the Breach and saving the world for good, after they’ve given their breathless initial reports, after they begin the long and heart-rending process of counting their dead;

After, Raleigh lays down carefully on the thin mattress in his quarters, rests his arms over his eyes, and breathes. And keeps on breathing, and shakes and maybe cries a little. His whole body aches, from the mission, from the Drift, and from the knowledge that it’s over.

It’s been twelve years, and it’s over now, and Yancy is still dead, and it’s actually _over_.

*

So what’s he supposed to _do_ now?

In the following days, he accumulates a pile of medals and commendations and certificates of service. He lends a hand in the early rebuilding that’s already started nearest to the coast, whenever he can spare a few hours, but finds that his presence is more of a distraction to the other volunteers than a help. There are still funerals and memorials to organize and attend, reports to write, and a few more meetings with Herc, but after that?

There aren’t any more Kaiju to fight, and no Jaegers to fight them with, and barely a handful Rangers left to pilot them, regardless.

He’d said, before, that he was finally thinking of the future, and that was true—he imagined the world rebuilding, recovering in earnest instead of in nervous fits and starts. He imagined himself, carelessly happy in a world that wasn’t so afraid, but it was vague at best. All Raleigh knows for sure is that he’d pictured being at Mako’s side; it was the only crystal clear thing against a hazy backdrop, against whatever the world would look like in the aftermath of a war too surreal and simultaneously far too real.

But Raleigh hasn’t even seen Mako except in passing all week, and her eyes have been carefully and deliberately blank every time they’ve met his.

*

On the raft, she’d clutched him so hard that he could feel the tips of her strong fingers leaving bruises on his back, his shoulders. Mako hadn’t let go even as they were escorted onto the chopper, and held his hand all the way to the infirmary, where they curled together tightly and wordlessly—a round of  velcroing intense enough to shake Raleigh to his bones until he had fallen asleep to the sound of Mako’s breathing and the distant fussing of their medic.

They had woken up within seconds of each other, and untangled themselves, smiling blearily and thankfully at one another in companionable silence. That night they’d returned to their respective quarters, alone.

She needs space, he knows because he needs it too, and he wants to let her have it. They both need to let the last few days settle, Mako especially—even as she finally avenged her family, she lost the last of it. Raleigh had tried to shoulder half the weight at the time through the neural link, but they’re not in the Drift anymore and there’s something to be said about processing your own pain.

So they keep their distance. At mealtimes, Raleigh lets her pass by in the mess hall with a nod, and doesn’t call after her as she walks away.

*

He dreams about her instead.

It’s a common side effect of the mental bond. The same thing used to happen with Yance all the time—they’d have nearly identical dreams for several days in a row, simply by virtue of living in each other’s heads so often. Mostly it was childhood memories: the hallways of the public high school they had both attended, a family vacation to Toronto, that one Christmas when Yancy was eight and convinced a five year-old Raleigh that building a snowman in the living room was a good idea, to the dismay of their parents.

But his dreams about Yancy never had this sense of _urgency_. Raleigh feels like he’s searching for something he can’t pin down, and in his dreams, just as in reality, Mako remains just out of reach. The setting changes from night to night: Anchorage, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Hawaii, and, more often than not, in Danger’s  Conn-Pod.

But even there, where their minds are supposed to be connected, Mako is painfully, curiously distant. Raleigh can hear her, but he can’t _hear_ her.

Each time, when he turns to look at her to ask a question—or just to _look_ at her— he wakes up.

*

The Shatterdome is emptying—most of the funding for the Jaeger program has been technically illegal since the official decommissioning, and many of the jobs in the ‘dome didn’t technically exist. And now that there aren’t any more Jaegers to maintain or Kaiju to fight, nearly all of the jobs _actually_ don’t exist. Most people aren’t willing to stick around for no pay while a newly-promoted Marshal Hansen and the PPDC try to figure out what to do next.

In the late afternoon, Raleigh makes his way from his quarters to Danger’s empty dock without passing another person. He lets his legs hang out over the edge and leans back to rest his weight on his palms.

Danger’s dock, like all of the other docks, is empty. The supports that would usually lock her in place are powered down for good. Raleigh both misses her and feels relieved that she’s gone—she doesn’t have to be decommissioned and taken apart, her skeleton sent off to Oblivion Bay once again. She fought well, and it seems wrong that she’s just gone now, but maybe it’s the clean break that Raleigh needs.

He aches for the Drift, misses her height and her heat and her heart. He misses the parts of her that held Yancy’s memory, the ones that had survived even through the Mako’s refit—as if she had known which parts to keep (which, honestly, Raleigh wouldn’t be surprised if she did).

Raleigh leans forward and crosses his arms. Slowly and deliberately, piece by piece, he thinks of laying Gipsy Danger to rest, his right hand clasped over the scars on his shoulder.

*

The days pass both slowly and much too fast, and Raleigh spends a long time each morning lying in bed, listening carefully for any sound from across the hall. He waits for her door to open and close, for her footsteps to fade down the hallway before he leaves his own room.

Raleigh is held taut between extremes—his want for Mako, to be near her, to be with her; versus some undefined fear that pulls lowly at his gut. He’s in limbo, he thinks, just waiting for something he can’t name.

He hangs out with Tendo one day, volunteers to be an extra pair of hands to help disassemble equipment.

“You’re quiet,” Tendo says, his tone carefully neutral. It’s the tone people use around soldiers, Raleigh notes, around soldiers who’ve seen action. He thinks, I’m not like those guys, I’m fine. But that’s probably what those guys think too.

“Everyone’s quiet,” Raleigh says, nodding toward the other personnel, who are performing their tasks much more efficiently than himself.

Tendo stares at him for a long time, his hands moving quickly as they wrap up another bundle of thick cable. “Okay,” he finally says. “That’s okay.”

*

It’s _not_ okay though, Raleigh is realizing.

*

A few nights later, Raleigh is dreaming of Mako again. Or, he thinks he is, until her dark eyes catch him, and he realizes that he’s dreaming _with_ her. She looks surprised to see him, an acknowledgement that he doesn’t belong in whichever memory this is. Raleigh feels momentarily unsure of his welcome, even though he’s been inside her brain before, even though Mako doesn’t seem upset to see him here and the dream version of Pentecost at Mako’s side doesn’t seem to notice him at all.

It’s not a nightmare, thankfully. Raleigh notices that the dream is fuzzy along the edges, and his brain can’t quite find the corners of the room, despite its relatively small size—like an old photograph filter. It feels calm and fond, but sad; resigned with a dull, deep ache in the way old wounds tend to be.

It’s a hospital room, Raleigh thinks— _knows_ , because he saw this in the Drift, just like he’s seen everything, just like Mako has seen his everything too.

Tamsin Sevier is stunning even in the last days of her life. She’s perched in a cushioned wheelchair near the windows, and she beams when she sees them.

“Stacks! Mako-chan!” She exclaims warmly as she extends her thin arms out. Pentecost moves forward first, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiles at her and leans over to place a kiss on Tamsin’s forehead.

Mako is twenty years old in the memory, but Raleigh watches the way her posture loosens as she approaches, until she looks as young as she must feel. The strong muscles in her forearms tremble as she embraces the woman who saved her life.

“I’ve missed you,” Mako admits against Tamsin’s temple, the soft skin and slight prickle. Tamsin’s hair had fallen out with the first round of chemo, and she’d kept it shaven ever since, even during the couple of years when they’d thought that she was getting better.

Tamsin smiles and it feels as if her bright green eyes are staring right at Raleigh, even though he’s sure that she can’t see him, that she’s just a memory. Mako pulls away after a long hug, and Tamsin gets another hug from Pentecost, before pulling away and regarding them solemnly.

“I need to tell you both,” she says.

Raleigh keeps his distance on the other side of the room, barely daring to breathe, uneasy with the knowledge of what’s to come but unable to look away. He saw shades of this incredible woman in Mako’s head, and he knows what it means to lose her.

Pentecost slumps just slightly, undetectable, and Raleigh wouldn’t have noticed it at all except that Mako remembers it with aching clarity. When Tamsin tells them, softly and firmly, that she has perhaps a couple months left, Mako makes an involuntary noise and Pentecost gently lays a hand on her shoulder, briefly—a motion for Mako to excuse them.

Stiffly, Mako bows her head in acknowledgment and makes it out the door, her legs shaky. She sags against the wall in the hallway.

Raleigh’s a step behind, kneeling close to her as his worried hands reach out on instinct, part of him afraid that he’ll just pass right through, like a ghost. He doesn’t though, and Mako leans into his touch as sorrow creases the tensed line of her brow. Her jaw is tight and her eyes are wet.

“Mako…” he starts, and stops because he doesn’t know what to say.

“She was _wonderful_ , Raleigh,” she tells him, voice soft and thick and resigned. She knows it’s a memory. ( _A nightmare_ , Raleigh corrects. _It’s a nightmare after all_.)

“I’m here,” Raleigh says, and it’s both a reassurance and a question. He pulls her in against his chest.

“Yes. Ghost-drifting. Neural withdrawal, of a sort.” She murmurs the words into his chest, too softly to conceivably be heard if they were awake, in the real world. “Our Drift was strong.”

“Yeah,” Raleigh says. “Do you want me to stay? I could try to leave?” He isn’t so sure that he knows how to wake himself up, but he briefly contemplates asking Mako to punch him or something, to shock him awake, like they do in cartoons.

Mako probably hears that, they’re in each other heads after all, because she makes a stilted noise that might be a chuckle.

“No, stay. I like you here. I need you here,” Mako says, earnestly.

Raleigh feels his heartbeat speeding up, and his heart jumps for the first time since the Breach—it might just be the dream environment; Mako is rarely so plain with her words—but he feels like maybe this is his future opening up in front of his eyes, in the curiously resilient bond he’s forged with this person who he’s known for such a short time.

And Raleigh spent a long five years of his life learning how to lie to others and to himself but he doesn’t know how to lie to Mako, not yet, and maybe not ever. “I like it here too,” he tells her, and swallows against the tightness in his throat. “I’m sorry, about the Marshall. I know he was your only family.”

Mako trembles a little, even though, distantly, they can both still hear Pentecost in the other room, the somber baritone of his voice simultaneously an open wound and a balm. He’s in the Drift, like he promised he would be.

“Thank you,” she says.

Raleigh thinks that’s it, thinks that he’d be content to sit here with her until they both wake up. But Mako surprises him by tilting her face to rest more securely in the cradle of Raleigh’s neck, and says, “I still have family.”

Her voice is dichotomous, soft with an undercurrent of steel, and it sparks a protective pride in his chest before Raleigh processes what she means. He hasn’t had any family since Anchorage and Knifehead, but.

But Mako has been inside his _head_ and embraced him in spite of it. And he may not fully understand where they stand, but Raleigh finds that he’s still thinking about the future, and he can agree to this.

“Yes,” he says.

*

In the morning, Mako comes to his room, and Raleigh lets her in.

*

Their learning each other is a tenuous thing, even for all that they’ve delved into each other’s heads, have functioned as one perfectly synchronized unit and saved the whole fucking planet together. They _know_ each other, and the fluidity with which they move around one another is beautiful, and terribly, wonderfully easy. Raleigh, who has spent most of his life afraid of intimacy and commitment—a diagnosis made not only by past significant others, but by the trained psychologist who’d had part in evaluating his Drift compatibility—he doesn’t feel any of that with Mako, which is its own brand of terrifying.

They fuck pressed tightly together, Mako’s legs wrapped around Raleigh’s waist as she murmurs gentle encouragement and gasps hotly against his temple, the noises soft and involuntary as if she can’t bear to keep them from him. Raleigh fucks into her deep; his heart aching in his chest for how completely he needs her, how he’ll likely always be the parched Earth to the bright blue rain of her, always needing more.

They sleep next to each other, limbs tangled together, and eat together in the mess hall at strange times of day when they both inexplicably get hungry at the same time.  They sit next to each other in one of the mostly-empty rooms on basement level five in the afternoons and file reports together, occasionally glancing up and grinning, their hands drifting across the table toward one another.

Raleigh is held taut by his pride and adoration of her. Mako has come to mean everything, and that’s not healthy, for one person to sum up the entirety of your world. Raleigh, who still dreams of Yancy’s death in startling detail, and feels the ghost-throb of their severed headspace like an old wound, knows better than most what the consequences can be.

He finds that he doesn’t care. He’s _been inside her head_ , he’s seen the world through her eyes, through the filter of her thoughts. He knows what she thinks of him; he’s brash and reckless and humbled and hurting and defiant in face of it all; she likes the blue of his eyes and admires the scars on his chest; she loved the way he looked at her when she knocked the breath out of him on the mats—surprised and proud and _wanting_.

She envies his experience and feels a humbled kinship for his pain. Mako loves him, and Raleigh doesn’t think loving is even an adequate word to represent all that Mako is to him.

“I’ve gotten some job offers,” Mako tells him over lunch one day. The Shatterdome will officially be shut down by the end of the month. “They’re mostly positions for the Restoration Project. There’s even one in Japan.”

Raleigh notices the tense set of her jaw, the bowed curve of her head. Mako is nervous, and Raleigh leans forward without thinking, stretching across the table to plant a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll go wherever you go,” he tells her, says it like a promise.

“Augh, gross,” Newt says, a couple feet down the bench from them. “Save your beautiful, sharp-cheekboned romance for when I’m not eating, please!”

“You are an embarrassment,” Dr. Gottlieb tells him, flatly.

“Oh ex _cuse_ me, Hermann,” Newt squawks, reflexively, his entire body twisting sharply as he turns to his lab partner. “I’m trying to have a conversation with my good friends, Rangers Mori and Becket, _Hermann_.”

“I have _told_ you that it is incredibly unprofessional to refer to me by my Christian name whilst in the workplace—”

“Oh is it _unprofessional_ , Hermann? _Is it_?” Newt swings his arm up in a wide arc, as if addressing the cafeteria as a whole. Their argument is hilariously redundant, and completely without any real ire.

Mako manages to stifle her amused smile, but Raleigh doesn’t bother and snorts, loudly. “Pretty hypocritical of you to tell me off for flirting, Newt,” he says, loudly and pointedly, and enjoys Mako’s laugh, a sharp, open-mouthed bark, at the way Newt sputters as both doctors' faces flush red.

*

Raleigh doesn’t miss the War, or the fear and the uncertainty that had come with it, but he finds that he misses the thrill, the adrenaline, the feeling of being nearly invincible. More importantly, he misses the connection.

“It’s a crutch,” he tells Mako as they lie on her regulation-sized bed, said softly into the crown of her hair.

“You mean the Drift,” Mako says. “Co-pilots often experience extreme mutual fixation, including physical and emotional codependence.”

“Which leads to the isolation of and distancing from others,” Raleigh says. There have been a lot of sociological and psychological studies and theories about effects of Pons technology, and much of it was required reading at the Academy. “There’s almost no research on what happens if the connection is broken—if one of the pilots dies.”

Mako hums a low, soothing noise against his chest, but he doesn’t need to be spared right now, and she says, “Most pilots die together.”

Raleigh nods, because his throat feels thick and heavy, and presses his face deeper into Mako’s hair.

He’d spent five years trying to forget what it was like, sharing a mind with Yancy—the brother he’d idolized and spent his childhood toddling after, who had taught him how to skateboard and follow through on a right hook—only to have him ripped away, the neurological equivalent of losing a limb.

He’d spent five years flinching at the memory, at the angry bleeding stump where Yancy’s mind used to live, of things left unsaid, of knowing deeply and shamefully that he’d lost the one person who was _home_ and _safe_ , and that it was partially his fault.

And a few short weeks with Mako had, if not exactly _healed_ him, at least shown him that he was still a whole person. More than that, Raleigh’s ability to trust didn’t die along with Yancy.

Raleigh doesn’t say this out loud. He doesn’t say that he feels lucky, now, to have survived, to have lived long enough to save more people, to see the end of the War. Mako knows already.

*

The last funeral to attend is the Kaidanovskys'. It’s on a Wednesday, and it’s miraculously sunny for January.

It’s packed with journalists and photographers, those with official invitations and press passes sitting as close to the front as they dare, furtively sneaking glances at the top brass in attendance as they scribble in notepads and mumble into recorders. Those without passes are hovering at the edges of the lawn, lightbulbs flashing despite the request for no photography.

On the way in, one of them catches Raleigh by the cuff of his uniform, and excitedly whispers a question to him, shoving a microphone towards his face before he can smile thinly and shrug her off.

They don’t get it. The tabloids keeps speculating about their relationship (it’s amazing how quickly the paparazzi surface from the woodwork), imagining what they must see in each other: the rugged American comeback hero with a heart of gold, and the lithe, exotic Japanese girl, the only survivor of Onibaba.

The insinuations rankle against Raleigh’s scalp, his anger rushing forth to try to get the better of him. It’s Mako that mollifies him by pressing a hand firmly against the small of his back.

Raleigh is torn between wanting to hide their relationship, to keep it hidden away from the curious, over-eager public; and wanting to show them, to sit down and write a novel-length treatise, a whole fucking epic poem in the hopes that it could convey wholly the strength and endurance of Mako Mori.

Mako keeps her hand on him until they take their seats. It’s a relatively short ceremony, somber and stiff like they’ve all been. Near the end, Herc makes the cookie-cutter speech he’s required to make, recognizing Aleksis and Sasha’s dedication and strength, their bravery and compatibility.

Raleigh and Mako stand to make a speech of their own—as the last Rangers left after Operation Pitfall, they’ve been asked to speak at several memorial services and commemorative events already. They wrote most of it separately, but Raleigh lets Mako make the majority of the speech this time. He hadn’t known the Kaidanovskys except in passing, he and Yancy never had the opportunity to jockey with any of the Russian jaegers, and although Aleksis had technically been in his graduating class at the Academy, they had never properly met.

Still, he knows the facts: the Kaidanovskys held the longest ever neural Drift at eighteen hours, and they’d protected the entirety of the Russian coast for six years. Cherno Alpha’s Conn-Pod was located in the chest, rather than the head, and they’d been deployed seven times knowing that there was no escape pod if they failed.

“We will remember them,” Mako says.

They wrote that line together. Raleigh closes his eyes for a moment of silence.

*

Raleigh goes back to Danger’s dock, this time with Mako at his side. It was only a couple weeks ago that they sat here together for the first time, but it feels like an entire lifetime ago. The war itself feels surreal, in hindsight, like maybe the last twelve years were just a long, crazy nightmare. It wasn’t, of course—a fact reaffirmed by the expressions that Raleigh sees on the faces of others, a contradictory mixture of joy and grief and excitement and anxiety.

The ‘dome is nearly empty now, even at usually high-traffic times. Most of the equipment has been shipped out, or else securely stored in the deepest basement levels.

They sit down on the same platform, close enough that their thighs are pressed together from hip to knee. Mako rests her head on his shoulder after a while.

“It’s symbolic, I guess,” Raleigh says, after a long time. He feels more than sees Mako’s questioning glance, and has to remind himself that she can’t _actually_ read his mind. “Oblivion Bay. In Oakland, where Trespasser fell. We buried all our bitter victories in one place—it was symbolic. And easier.”

Mako lays her head on his shoulder, and nods in agreement. “I’ve been there,” she says, “Sensei took me when we began the Mark III Restoration Project.”

Raleigh smiles; he knows the memory. He’s never been to Oblivion Bay himself, of course—it was only active for a couple years, and he was too angry, too drunk and heartbroken, and then just too broke, forced to follow the construction of the wall for work.

But Mako was there. Raleigh can see it in his head, the scrapyard of broken Jaegers so looming and massive that you could taste the metal on the air, and you had to wear thick sunglasses on sunny days to protect from the glare.

Technically it was a restricted area, but someone had scaled the rickety fence to loop a garland of daisies on a protruding edge of Coyote Tango’s breastplate. In Mako’s memory, Pentecost had paused, stiff-backed, and pressed his fingertips over the sheet that used to house Tango’s nuclear heart, long-since removed. The memory lingers between them.

“I think I want to take that job in Japan,” Mako says, finally. “The Tokyo Restoration Effort.”

Raleigh takes her hand, smiling. “That sounds great, Mako.”

“And,” Mako hesitates for a moment, “I would like to visit Alaska again. I didn’t travel off-base while I was at the Academy.” Her face softens. “I would like to see for myself the place that made you.”

 _You are the place that’s made me_ , Raleigh thinks automatically, though he knows it’s only partially true. He swallows around the gratitude swelling in his throat.

“Is that okay?” Mako asks, turning towards him.

Raleigh nods and wraps his arms around her. He doesn’t try to hide the tears in his eyes. He wants to take her to his hometown, maybe drive past the house that contains his childhood—

Raleigh wants, achingly, to visit Yancy’s grave, and his parents’, and introduce them to Mako.

Mako’s grip around his shoulders doesn’t slacken until Raleigh clears his throat. He looks into her eyes, thinking that he loves her; he is grateful and broken and happy and he loves her.

“Yeah. Yes. That would be good,” he says.

*

**Author's Note:**

> (the actual alternative title is _Raleigh loves Mako and So Should You._ )
> 
> you can find me on [tumblr](http://dee-lirious.tumblr.com/) where i mostly just reblog things and type my feelings in all caps.


End file.
